Hard Girls is a razor-sharp crime novel that delves into the complexities of family and the depths of darkness that can haunt a seemingly normal life. Jane Pool is content with her safe, suburban existence, complete with a house, a family, and a mundane job at a local college. However, Jane's past—marked by an enigmatic mother, family secrets, and a life-changing act of violence—continues to haunt her.
When Jane's estranged twin sister, Lila, reaches out with claims of knowing their mother's whereabouts and the reasons behind her long-ago departure, Jane is drawn into a quest for the truth. Together, the sisters embark on a perilous journey that takes them to far-flung corners of the world, challenging their mother's deceptions and confronting the pervasive darkness that has always loomed over their family.
As the stakes rise, Jane risks the life she has carefully built for a past that she has never been able to fully escape. Hard Girls combines elements of a chase novel, an espionage thriller, and domestic suspense to create a compelling and unique narrative experience that is at once propulsive, mysterious, intelligent, and filled with unexpected twists.
From the author of the underground sensation Fight Club comes this wickedly incisive second novel, a mesmerizing, unnerving, and hilarious vision of cult and post-cult life.
Tender Branson—last surviving member of the so-called Creedish Death Cult—is dictating his life story into the flight recorder of Flight 2039, cruising on autopilot at 39,000 feet somewhere over the Pacific Ocean. He is all alone in the airplane, which will crash shortly into the vast Australian outback. Before it does, he will unfold the tale of his journey from an obedient Creedish child and humble domestic servant to an ultra-buffed, steroid- and collagen-packed media messiah, author of a best-selling autobiography, Saved from Salvation, and the even better selling Book of Very Common Prayer (The Prayer to Delay Orgasm, The Prayer to Prevent Hair Loss, The Prayer to Silence Car Alarms). He'll reveal the truth of his tortured romance with the elusive and prescient Fertility Hollis, share his insight that "the only difference between suicide and martyrdom is press coverage," and deny responsibility for the Tender Branson Sensitive Materials Sanitary Landfill, a 20,000-acre repository for the nation's outdated pornography. Among other matters both bizarre and trenchant.
Not since Kurt Vonnegut's Mother Night and Jerzy Kosinski's Being There has there been as dark and telling a satire on the wages of fame and the bedrock lunacy of the modern world. Unpredictable, compelling, and unforgettable, Survivor is Chuck Palahniuk at his deadpan peak; and it cements his place as one of the most original writers in fiction today.
Karin Slaughter’s novels featuring Special Agent Will Trent are utterly riveting and masterfully drawn. Her latest thriller, Unseen, pits detectives, lovers, and enemies against one another in an unforgettable standoff between righteous courage and deepest evil.
Will Trent is a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent whose latest case has him posing as Bill Black, a scary ex-con who rides a motorcycle around Macon, Georgia, and trails an air of violence wherever he goes. The cover has worked and he has caught the eye of a wiry little drug dealer who thinks he might be a useful ally.
But undercover and cut off from the support of the woman he loves, Sara Linton, Will finds his demons catching up with him. Although she has no idea where Will has gone, or why, Sara herself has come to Macon because of a cop shooting: Her stepson, Jared, has been gunned down in his own home.
Sara holds Lena, Jared’s wife, responsible: Lena, a detective, has been a magnet for trouble all her life, and Jared’s shooting is not the first time someone Sara loved got caught in the crossfire. Furious, Sara finds herself involved in the same case that Will is working without even knowing it, and soon danger is swirling around both of them.
In a novel of fierce intensity, shifting allegiances, and shocking twists, two investigations collide with a conspiracy straddling both sides of the law. Karin Slaughter’s latest is both an electrifying thriller and a piercing study of human nature: what happens when good people face the unseen evils in their lives.
Switch Bitch is a collection of four tales of seduction and suspense, masterfully told by the grand master of the short story, Roald Dahl.
The Visitor and Bitch feature Dahl's notorious hedonist Oswald Hendryks Cornelius, or plain old Uncle Oswald, whose exploits are as extraordinary as they are scandalous.
The Great Switcheroo and The Last Act explore a darker side of desire and pleasure, capturing the ins and outs, highs and lows of sex through black comedy.
Roald Dahl, the brilliant and worldwide acclaimed author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda, also wrote scores of short stories for adults. These delightfully disturbing tales have often been filmed and were the inspiration for the West End play Roald Dahl’s Twisted Tales by Jeremy Dyson.
Over 50 years after their original publication, Roald Dahl’s stories continue to entertain and make readers shiver today.
A wine connoisseur with an infallible palate and a sinister taste in wagers. A decrepit old man with a masterpiece tattooed on his back. A voracious adventuress, a gentle cuckold, and a garden sculpture that becomes an instrument of sadistic vengeance. Social climbers who climb a bit too quickly. Philanderers whose deceptions are a trifle too ornate. Impeccable servants whose bland masks slip for one vertiginous instant.
In these deliciously nasty stories, an internationally acclaimed practitioner of the short narrative works his own brand of black magic: tantalizing, amusing, and sometimes terrifying readers into a new sense of what lurks beneath the ordinary.
Included in Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected are such notorious gems of the bizarre as "The Sound Machine," "Lamb to Slaughter," "Neck," and "The Landlady."